


Not the Only One

by Cards_Slash



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Cheating, F/M, M/M, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 23:27:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5474483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>how Federico cheated on his wife but they ended up a threesome, set to the tune of Sam Smith on repeat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not the Only One

**Author's Note:**

> i decided to write this story from the most depressing view point possible, i.e. the wife. you're welcome.

It started in February. When the nights and her bed were still bitter with cold.

\--

She figured it out in March. Federico’s arms around her body in the kitchen, the warm-and-lewd press of his body against her back like an echo of the man-and-woman they had been once. He kissed her neck with his fingers inching her skirt up. There was no part of her that wasn’t starved for him; no part that didn’t want to remember what it felt like to be loved.

\--

There was no distinguishing the truth from lies with Federico. Every word he said was as true as he believed them to be. The whole story of their life had been one long series of his lies, strung together on golden threads, left hanging from the endless black sky like stars. 

Oh but she believed in those stars, she sat in awe of them.

\--

There had always been long evenings at the office. There had always been overnight trips to other cities. Federico had been locked in his study, growling into his phone while he bled endless lines of numbers and words across forests worth of paper. That hadn’t changed (not ever).

\--

It brought a smile to her face, (when she figured it out, when she was sitting in the bottom of the walk-in-closet with his clothes in tatters and piles around her), to think that methodical-and-careful Federico hadn’t even been given away by a stray love bite. His naked body was the same predictable map of scars, of dips and slopes, the rise and fall of the same muscle and bone as ever. In between one aborted sob and the next hitch of her shoulders, the thought slammed into her between the ribs. It was _funny_ the way every stupid practical thing Federico had ever done was _funny_. 

\--

(She tried to imagine his lover, caught in passion with open whore mouth and rough-cut fingernails _trying_ to sign her name on Federico’s back. Imagine the immediate stop of his every affection, the wholly offended silence that followed that attempt before it was laid out. So careful and so methodical. Marks are evidence.)

\--

In April, she dug her nails down Federico’s back when he fucked her in their bed. She dug her teeth into his shoulder when she invaded his shower and pressed her naked body against his back. Federico didn’t even flinch. He only turned his head and knocked his head against hers. That old-old habit he had when he didn’t understand and wouldn’t ask. She wanted to scream at him about she didn’t _get it either_ and she just clenched her teeth all the tighter on his hot-hot-skin.

\--

What gave Federico away was not his schedule or his body. It was not his words or his unspoken language. What gave her husband away was the quirk of his smile when he stared into the fridge. The odd tick of his that had been so sweet and so endearing to her when they were young. Her stupid-stupid-husband had smiled at condiments in dusty restaurants and he had smiled at front-page disasters with her fingers tangled in his because he smiled-like-that (exactly like _that_ ) when he was busy falling in love. There was nothing evil; there was nothing _bad_ in all the world when there was love.

(And there was nothing good without it.)

\--

The secret settled in her gut like poison. It kept itself company with her bitter regrets. It built a mansion out of her doubts. 

\--

The private detective that she hired was resigned to the inevitability of finding a mistress. He had been _businesslike_ without being _comforting_ when he said, “yes I have seen this quite a bit in my line of work. I want to prepare you by saying, ninety six percent of the cases I have investigated have turned out exactly as the wives suspected.” And his solemn gray face and stared at her with unflinching boldness, asking without asking if she were sure she wanted a face to blame her nightmares on.

\--

Federico kissed her in the morning, the way he had long before things had gone wrong. He laid against her body on lazy mornings, with his wandering fingers under his clothes and his re-washed daydreams. “Maybe we could try again,” he said so softly there was no mistaking the fear caught inside the delicate little sliver of hope. And she threaded her fingers through his hair and pulled him up to kiss him (thinking, oh _thinking_ , she would try a thousand times if he could only find his way back to loving only her).

\--

The private detective gave her a face, an address and a name. The glossy photograph burned in smoking curls in the fireplace but the address and the name were tucked safely into the pockets of her purse while she thought-and-thought herself sick over a long work weekend.

\--

She met her husband’s lover at an all-night breakfast place. She invited herself to join the table of one with a polite word to the server and the very same presumptive right that this person had taken to her husband. “Yes, hello,” she said to the confusion on this stranger’s face. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Uh, no,” the man said. He looked over his shoulder and then back at her with the same careful confusion. His accent was a confusion of origins, wrapped up and turned inside out by the lateness of the hour. His ragged hair was barely held back by a band at the nape of his neck and his smile, when he tried, was _exhausted_. “Should we have?”

\--

His name was Edward Kenway. He wasn’t even _handsome_ and it made her angry to think that Federico was falling in love with this _thing_ when still had _her_.

\--

“Yes, I think so,” she said. She set her purse on the bench at her side and lifted one hand to signal the waiter. “Coffee please, black.” And she sat and watched Edward process her order and her presence until the confusion reached an acute stage. Then she said, “you’re fucking my husband.”

“Oh,” Edward said. He sat back away from his plate and rested his hands in his lap. The stance of his body was neither aggressive nor apologetic. It was simply the acceptance of this inevitable moment. He nodded his head and the long, oily strands of his hair fell from the poor attempt at a bun. “Well, I suppose it is time we’ve met.”

She snorted. “I’d like to know how it started.”

\--

It started in _February_. During a hell of a fucking storm, when Edward was cold and poor and _homeless_ (again, a near constant problem). It started with some bored-rich-man sort that got all the wrong ideas about Edward. Then (again), it wasn’t like Edward to turn down easy money or sex and it seemed to be the perfect arrangement when the rich-bored-man offered to buy them a hotel room for the night.

\--

“I’m not a whore,” Edward interjected into the story. Just between the point at which he explained how Federico had picked him up on a street corner and just before he got the part about how he took his clothes off for money. He seemed to realize how unconvincing that objection was because he stabbed at his breakfast with his fork and cocked a self-defeating smirk. “At least, not as a general rule.”

“Did he pay well?”

“I don’t know the going rate these days,” Edward said. He shrugged. “I’m not as homeless as once I was. I suppose that pays well enough.”

\--

In March, Edward fought back against the assumption that he was for rent. Federico defeated him because it was the way he operated. Federico talked-and-bargained-and- _won_ no matter the battle. 

(She had considered this when she considered screaming the truth in his face.)

\--

Edward rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “I didn’t know he was married until then. I told him to leave me alone. I mean—you’re married to him. You know how he is.”

“When did you fall in love with him?” She took the coffee from the waiter when it arrived and set it on the table with her hand cupped around it, soaking up the radiant heat. If there were ever mercy in her, it might have softened the accusation in her voice. It might have forgiven this poor, stupid man for falling for the same impossible man. She sat across from him and she took _delight_ in watching him squirm.

But Edward was _honest_ (such a refreshing change) when he ran his tongue across his lips and said, “must have been in April. First time I’ve kept the same job for more than three weeks since I was eighteen years old. I wait tables.”

\--

When Edward said, ‘I don’t want your money,’ he had meant ‘stop coming to see me’ and Federico had decided it must have meant, ‘now we can fuck for free’ because no matter what he did or what he tried, Federico kept showing up at his door.

\--

She drew in a breath and let it out again. “We lost our baby,” she said. Because the blood that soaked their mattress, that intimate betrayal of her body, had laid the foundation for this catastrophe. The words were meaningless in comparison to the memory but they were still sharp enough to hurt. “He asked me last week if I would like to try again. There’s a higher risk of miscarriage now that I’ve already had one. He knows this. He wouldn’t ask me to try again when he knows the odds are against us.”

Edward just pressed his lips together. “If you’ve got some idea about how to get rid of him, I’d love to hear it. I even tried moving without leaving a forwarding address and—” he motioned at her sitting across from him.

Her smile was forgiving even when every part of her body was _not_. “I believe you misunderstand my husband. He is tenacious.”

“He is that.” Then Edward just stared at her. “Are you going to leave him?”

\--

In her mind, far from the surface of her face, she imagined the life she could have had if her first child hadn’t been born as a bloody puddle across the bright-white-sheets of her bed. If she hadn’t woken to a living nightmare with stringy bits and blood clots stuck to Federico’s pants as he fell out of bed to follow after her rattling screams. 

She liked to imagine what their child would have been like: the color his hair and the shape of his face. She liked to imagine how he would have felt in her arms and against her breast when she nursed him. How he would have grown up strong and tall like his father. It was safe to imagine it in the cold of that winter.

\--

“No, of course not. Come to dinner at our house,” she said. “I’d like to see if we can’t come to some agreement about our predicament. You see, I love my husband. I do not doubt that he loves me. You—you may be a momentary interruption or you may be a constant. That can only be known with the passing of time.”

Edward looked suspicious. “He won’t like finding me at your table.”

“Yes, well I didn’t like finding that you were fucking him. We must all deal with these minor upsets. I would like to continue on peacefully but I cannot do that if you are a shoddy secret, purchased in hotel rooms. The constant knowledge of you interrupts my life.” And she savored the embarrassment on his face. “Come to my table, eat dinner with me and my husband.”

\--

It was June before Edward accepted her invitation. He came to her home wearing a blue shirt with buttons and a pair of pants that were faded at all the seams. His hands were too large and too nervous to fit with the rest of him as he stood in the foyer of her home, looking around like a precious lost puppy, awed and cowed by the magnificence of Federico’s wealth. 

She sat him at the table and she set out the dishes with gold inlay. The two of them sat on opposite sides of the table with the smell of roasting meat in the air between them, and sipped wine from tall glasses while they waited. 

Edward said, “this isn’t poisoned is it?” But he drank like the possibility were so slim it was nonexistent.. (And she drank, little sips and dainty slurps, like she’d considered it on repeating since February.)

\--

Federico came home with his tie pulled loose. The weight of a long day slowing his step as he came around the corner to the dining room. His mouth was forming words that died in his throat as soon as he took in the sight of them. Dinner had finished (and been eaten, mostly) before he arrived. Edward was looser with wine and hot food in his belly, leaning back in his seat as he told her how he’d almost become a pirate once. “Not exactly the illustrious career the movies would have you believe,” was how he rounded off his story. 

“Well,” Federico said as he tugged his tie off entirely. “I cannot say that this is entirely surprising.”

She only smiled and raised her glass to her lips. She looked sideways at Edward who seemed more surprised than anyone. Then she motioned at the plate at the head of the table. “We saved you a plate.” 

\--

In June, she said, “I want transparency. There is no reason to sneak or hide. It insults my intelligence.” 

Federico, well fed and shrewd-faced, sat at the head of the table and listened to her every word. He weighed them for their worth and his ability to abide by her rules and then he turned to look at Edward with an upturned eyebrow like asking his permission. “That is fair,” he said.

“I don’t want to get paid anymore,” Edward said. And he said it like he was expecting to be laughed at. Federico only smiled (the very most damning smile that he was capable of) and nodded his head. Edward’s grin was out of his control, spreading up at the edges of his mouth and all throughout his body. “Good,” he said, “good.”

\--

She did not fall in love with Edward. He was a parasite that fed off the stability of her marriage. It was the breaking of her back that kept her home from falling to shambles. It was the agreement she demanded that allowed Federico to excuse himself from the weight of their faltering marriage.

No, she didn’t fall in love with Edward, but he _endeared_ himself to her. He sent her gifts like take-out dinners that he thought she’d like (or else liked to copy) and sent her invitations to performances at dirty clubs where up-and-coming bands were singing for their supper. She liked that, those men and women on the stage with skeleton-thin bodies and raving hunger in their voices. She liked the desperation and the raw power of their talents. How Edward had come to know her favorite foods, or her love for undiscovered genius remained a gray mystery. It was preferable to her that she not put too much thought into it. She sat at his side, drinking watered-down-piss-beer and listening to the future of the world.

\--

By November, Edward was as familiar to her as any professional Federico had ever worked with. The sight of him, the sound of him, the smell of him (often lingering on Federico’s clothes and body) did not offend her. And when he started inviting himself over to her house in the afternoons (before Federico came home) with new coffees and still-hot-pastries, she could not even find the venom to hate him for it.

Edward was out of place among the fine things in her home. The blunt edges of his indelicate hands were too large for her plates and dishes. He was absurd with his fingers clutched around a silver spoon. The scars on his face, the tattoos that teased at the ends of his sleeves and the tops of his collars were an affront to the fine art that decorated her walls. And yet, his laugh was not unwelcome. His conversation was not without intelligence and _wit_. 

“How do you do it?” he asked her at the end of one long afternoon when they thought the coffee would taste better with cognac in it. His cheeks were so pink when he was drunk on good liquor. His knees were spread so far she was distracted by how very much (she) Federico must have liked crawling up between them. He looked at her with honest wonder, and more respect that she might have thought he was capable of. He said, “I always thought he was crazy for taking an interest in me, but if he’s crazy then you are—I don’t know. You deserve better.” But she didn’t give an answer because the door cracked open and Federico called his greeting. Edward laughed all bawdy-and-liquor-damp. 

\--

Christmas was an organized affair, a loveless display of familial obligations. She put her hair in curls and lined her mouth and her eyes to hide the disgust she felt for them. Federico put his arm around her and they made their way through the endless rounds of work-and-family, wishing everyone the most sincere joy. They passed out soulless gifts that were designed to appear thoughtful and meaningless in a constant contradiction. 

This year she was angrier than she had ever been. Furious with the denial of her every wish and whim. There was nothing-nothing-nothing that she wanted in the world the way she wanted the child she might have had the year before. Her poor dead child should have been a sweet-faced reality choked on fine clothes and overladen with wet cheeks from family kisses.

Federico knew, of course. It was in his voice and his shoulders and in his hands when he pulled her into a hug more sincere and more _painful_ than any he had offered her in the long months since they woke up covered in blood. She cried against his chest with her hands twisting in his shirt and he cried with her. The agony of their loss finally brought to full realization: ugly and red.

\--

Edward came around at the end of December. She was set to tell him that he was unwelcome at her home presently. Because the lanced wound of her loss made her _indignant_ and he was an easy-enough target. But he stood on the front porch of her home with a carrier of coffee dangling from one hand and a fat-faced baby hanging onto his chest. “So, I have a child, apparently.” The unfairness of it was a livid streak of heat that went through her spine. But the confusion, the hurt and the hope caught in the way he looked at her tempered the rage. She motioned him in and he stepped inside. The coffee he offered was Turkish (not particularly good). The child was a girl, a sweet-faced thing with an uncertain temper named _Jennifer_.

“Are you sure she’s yours?” she asked. She was holding the baby in her lap, letting the little girl play with Edward’s keys (the only toy that either of them had managed to find in the whole of her house). Edward nodded without explaining how he had come to be so sure. “Are you going to keep her?” Because the story had unfolded like a tragedy: an old girlfriend who kept the baby and her secret until she grew too ill to care for either. The woman was _dying_ right this very second and this precious child was in need of a home.

Edward drew in a breath and let it out again. “I’d like to.” And the more seriously, “yes.”

\--

In January, she found herself in the toy aisle of a local department store. Picking through the offerings, comparing the packaging to online reviews. 

She was in the aisles of clothes, sifting through the cutest clothes, recalling how quickly the child grew in just a few week and thinking of how big she’d be in just another few months. Her smile was exasperation that this little child would outgrow clothes before the credit bill was even fully paid for. 

Federico was always smiling. It followed him out of bed in the morning, it came home with him in the afternoon. She allowed it with more grace than she felt because Edward brought Jenny around to visit once a week. (Though it was _certain_ that Federico saw her far more often.) 

\--

On a Tuesday, after work but before Federico was meant to go and have a visit with Edward. Late in January when the air was bitterest with the cold. Federico came home with his persistent smile. He was carrying Jenny when he found her in the kitchen. His shrewd-face full of cleverness when he said, “the woman he hired to watch the child is charging him a fortune.” He set the baby girl on the island between them. The strap of the diaper bag was hanging off his shoulder in a way that made jealousy-and-fire spike through her whole body. “She smokes and she watches TV. I thought, until someone more suitable could be found?” 

“This is not my child,” she said because she had hardened her heart against it. (Not the child, oh of course not, but against the possibility of having any ownership of its well-being.) “Please don’t.”

“At some point,” Federico said very softly, “we must stop pretending. Edward will not be leaving us. I don’t imagine that even if you could dismiss him at this point; you would. I want to bring him home. He won’t come because he does not believe you can welcome him.” But every-word-every-single-one was _she can be yours_ just as long as _Edward can be mine_. And there was no question that she would accept the child.

\--

It started in February, when Edward ragged with lack of sleep, came to bring Jenny to stay the day with her. He was yawning with black under his eyes, rubbing at the nape of his neck saying, “teething I think. She just won’t sleep.”

She pulled him into the house, she called him in sick to work and she put him to bed in the guest room. Edward mumbled and grumbled and fell asleep as soon as his cheek touched the fine sheets of the room. Then she soothed the baby and rocked her to sleep. The pair of them were snoozing in their own rooms.

It was imperfect but _right_. And she spent the whole of their naptime researching how best to decorate a nursery.

\--

She figured it out in March, when she found Edward in the kitchen after dark. He was rinsing out a bottle in the sink, halfway turned around when he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up. I should have gone ho—“

It was her hands up around his neck and her mouth that cut across his and brought the words to a standstill. But it was his hands that wrapped around her waist, that lifted her up and set her on the counter. She inched her nightgown up to her hips, there was nothing-nothing underneath but her warm-naked-skin. He moaned, "Mary," into her mouth in a rattling-desperate way. Not so different from the way Federico mumbled his quiet entreaties against her neck when he woke her up begging for sex. His hands were rough on her breast through the paper-thin material of her gown.

She wormed her hand into his pants, she pulled him into her dick-fist and sighed at the insistent fullness of him inside of her. His hair was soft and thick between her fingers. His hands were sure and yet gruff around her, keeping her in place to match the measured-thrusts of his hips. He fucked her like a love song, slow-and-sweet and inspired.

\--

Federico made them breakfast on the weekends, wearing an apron over his day-off clothes. He heated the syrup for pancakes on the stove and hummed under his breath as he licked butter off his fingers. When they had heaping plates of food, he stood on his side of the island and smiled at the strange little family they had made. 

“It is my birthday soon,” he said. And before anyone could ask him what he wanted, “perhaps we could try to have sex all at the same time.”

She did not blush because she was embarrassed. But because Edward looked so offended with his daughter sitting in his lap, licking syrup off her tiny fingers with a clever quirk to her lip at having discovered the sticky, delicious confection. “Perhaps,” she said, “if you are very lucky.”


End file.
